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Czar Nicholas takes command of the Imperial Russian Army
Serious setbacks in the war with Germany have created a nearly untenable situation for the Russian Army. Once considered one of the most powerful forces in the world, the Russian military had been humbled in battle with the Japanese, and had serious problems maintaining cohesion even before the war. Training in the army prior to 1914 ranged from good in a few line regiments, to non-existant for the average regiment destined to mostly be used in harvesting and transporting food. Many regiments were further brittle after being used for years as muscle for local police forces. Highly trained units such as the Cossacks were often squandered, and the very common sense that made these units valuable also meant they resisted the trenches and were subject to desertion when called upon to make major sacrifices. Finally, the supply of ammunition and weapons in the field had not improved since the start of the war.
Russia, then as now, was one of the most corrupt nations to hold status as a world power, with up to 90% of each Ruble spent on defense failing to reach military units on the front. The Russian military was a huge aparatus, but units were largely staffed by illiterate peasants unable to handle logistics. Trained and literate officers took a lack of serious oversight in logistics as a chance to simply take as much as they wanted from the supply chain, leading to units (usually in the rear) that had massive overages of supply, to units at the front where sharing rifles and distributing ammunition by the clip to soldiers was the norm.
By late 1915 the Czar had seen the Russian failures in the war as a personal insult, and felt the only way the war could be turned around would be his taking direct command of the military. There was three problems with this. The first was that he was completely untrained to run a major military campaign. His father, feeling he was frivolous and too young, had denied Nicholas any serious training in adminstration or military science. By the time Nicholas ascended the throne there no longer existed the infrastructure to train a sitting emperor, and even if their did Nicholas had an autocratic nature that made it impossible to accept correction from teachers. Second, Nicholas lacked strong channels of information into the military. Orders from him in the Kremlin were largely meaningless since they were made in response to information that rarely was truthful about conditions at the front. Finally, the ruling council felt that if Nicolas made himself a military leader then setbacks at the front would result in revolution. Nicholas ignored all of these issues and went ahead, taking command of the army with a letter to his uncle, its head during the first year of the war:
5 September 1915
At the beginning of the war I was unavoidably prevented from following the inclination of my soul to put myself at the head of the army. That was why I entrusted you with the Commandership-in-Chief of all the land and sea forces.
Under the eyes of the whole of Russia your Imperial Highness has given proof during the war of steadfast bravery which caused a feeling of profound confidence, and called forth the sincere good wishes of all who followed your operations through the inevitable vicissitudes of fortune of war.
My duty to my country, which has been entrusted to me by God, impels me to-day, when the enemy has penetrated into the interior of the Empire, to take the supreme command of the active forces and to share with my army the fatigues of war, and to safeguard with it Russian soil from the attempts of the enemy.
The ways of Providence are inscrutable, but my duty and my desire determine me in my resolution for the good of the State.
The invasion of the enemy on the Western front necessitates the greatest possible concentration of the civil and military authorities, as well as the unification of the command in the field, and has turned our attention from the southern front.
At this moment I recognize the necessity of your assistance and counsels on our southern front, and I appoint you Viceroy of the Caucasus and Commander-in-Chief of the valiant Caucasian Army.
I express to your Imperial Highness my profound gratitude and that of the country for your labours during the war.
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